Need working 386/486 laptop with 2 serial ports

[jaeco]

I use an old program that really can only run on the above computers with Windows 95 or even the Windows before that..3.1? Not sure. I do not know that much about computers but I do know that I can only have the above to run my program. I can't use Windows 98. I need 2 serial ports for my attachments OR a PCMCIA slot that includes the working card. I have two old laptops that have been real troopers...an old Acer and an Austin. The one has a broken internal disc drive and the screen needs to be propped up...the other the screen doesn't work. I need to find a replacement before one of these goes totally around the bend. I've taken each to a computer shop and the problem on the one with the disc drive issues, they couldn't find a drive that would work. I could live with propping the top. At any rate, I would really appreciate any ideas or thoughts on where I could buy something like this. Thanks!

 

[lif_andi]

You could make a virtual machine with an old OS.

 

[serpretetsky]

are you sure it needs to be a 486 or 386? (didn't even realize they ever made laptops with these). I would think any laptop with serial ports that can support windows 95 will probably work, no? Pentium 1, 2, 3, 4?

 

[serpretetsky]

You could make a virtual machine with an old OS.

is setting up serial port pass through easy in virtual machines?

 

[lif_andi]

Hyper V has some serial support.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Is virtualization an option? Could you virtualize win95 or 3.1 on more modern hardware?

 

[wilds]

I use VMWare a lot for Windows and I can easily add a Serial port to my virtual machine. I recommend downloading VirtualBox (free), and 'find' a copy of Windows 95 or older to virtualize.
I wouldn't say it's immoral to find a copy of super old software on the net, but legal is best.

I don't really know what your program is doing and why it needs the ports it does. Do you need a physical attachment for some reason?

 

[jaeco]

This is where you are all over my head. I will say that when I tried to address this problem with a computer shop, they tried something with virtual...I don't even know what it was called. Seems like they tried everything. I even called the engineer that I work with who never has not been able to answer a computer queston for me and he tried the same thing they did.

I need two serial ports because I connect a stenograph machine (as in court reporter) to one port...and the other port is for an external Zoom modem...or US Robotics. Both have worked well. On one of my computers I use a PCMCIA card for the second serial port. An internal modem doesn't work for this software that I have.

Here is the what software requires for hardware: a 286 or faster computer running DOS...I forgot to mention that...., DOS version 3.3 or higher. Hard drive needs minimum of 2 megabytes of free space. One parallel and two serial ports. Also it can be used on IBM PS/2 system, model 50 or above. I'd not read that part before..Is that Pentium or??

Thanks!

 

[pw257008]

why can't you use a modem that goes through ethernet?

 

[jaeco]

?? It doesn't recognize Windows at all...only DOS..In fact Windows doesn't even come up..they just come up to the C: prompt. I don't know how I would do that, a modem through the ethernet. Couldn't do that with DOS, right? I really think I just need to find computers like I have...like in the hardwire requirements above. I spent a lot of time and money last year trying to find ways around this and no one around here could figure one out. I could purchase Windows-based software for about $5000...but I don't want to do that. I'd like to retire with this software and others are doing it somehow. We all work remotely and I just can't find out where they get the computers. there is a company that will load the software and build a 386 computer from parts of 386s that they put together and they charge $500. I felt like I could get an old working computer like this and just load my own software and not spend nearly that much. Maybe not but I was hoping...

 

[cubby1223]

ebay is your friend. find all sorts of ancient obsolete hardware there.

Someone I've done work for ran an old 486 desktop and boots to dos for some court reporting software, maybe the same software. I replaced that computer with a "newer" pentium !!! system a couple years back, still ran dos just fine. This software demanded all cache memory be disabled for it to run correctly. If this is the same software (I haven't a clue what the name was), this is probably the issue trying to run it on newer hardware or through emulators.

 

[cooltouch]

A google search brought me to this site and after reading what I came for I took a look around and decided I kind of liked what I saw. And then the title of this thread caught my eye, so I just had to come over and check it out. I guess I'm reading through these posts with a mixture of amazement and humor (I'm amazed and laughing because some of you have it so wrong!), some nostalgia, and a fair amount of head-scratching, thinking about how it was in the old days . . .

This is where you are all over my head. I will say that when I tried to address this problem with a computer shop, they tried something with virtual...I don't even know what it was called. Seems like they tried everything. I even called the engineer that I work with who never has not been able to answer a computer queston for me and he tried the same thing they did.

I need two serial ports because I connect a stenograph machine (as in court reporter) to one port...and the other port is for an external Zoom modem...or US Robotics. Both have worked well. On one of my computers I use a PCMCIA card for the second serial port. An internal modem doesn't work for this software that I have.

Here is the what software requires for hardware: a 286 or faster computer running DOS...I forgot to mention that...., DOS version 3.3 or higher. Hard drive needs minimum of 2 megabytes of free space. One parallel and two serial ports. Also it can be used on IBM PS/2 system, model 50 or above. I'd not read that part before..Is that Pentium or??

I was a pretty knowledgeable DOS user back in the day, then I bought into the OS/2 operating system, which still allowed for a fair amount of DOS stuff to be run, but which was a very robust and reliable multitasking OS, and then the OS wars happened when MicroSloth released Win95, and I eventually became a reluctant and somewhat embittered user of Microsoft OSes. IMNSHO, Microsoft didn't finally release an OS that was as good as OS/2 until XP. But I digress.

To answer your last question first, the PS/2 architecture was IBM's last attempt at dominating the PC market. The PS/2 machines never really caught on, but certain aspects of their design did. Just about every full size computer keyboard you see nowadays is a PS/2 keyboard. Before the PS/2 keyboard, in reverse order, were the AT keyboard, and the PC/PC-XT keyboard. I and many other users of IBM computers really didn't like the design of the PS/2 keyboard mostly because of the location of the function keys across the top. We preferred them to be in two vertical columns down the far left side of the kb. For several years you could buy alternative kbs that bucked the PS/2 trend -- Focus being one of the better known brands. Also there was a company called Northgate, I believe, who built the alternative design keyboards. I still have a couple of Focuses and a Northgate -- they're all busted now, and besides they use the AT-style plug anyway, which isn't compatible with ATX architecture machines.

Before USB took the place of everything, the small round plugs used for mice and keyboards were known as PS/2 connectors. Oh, and if memory serves me correctly, IBM also debuted the VGA video format with PS/2s. VGA was a real ground breaker -- 640x480 with what was it? 256 colors? Prior to that you had 16 colors on the XTs and ATs with their EGA format cards.

Also if memory serves, the first PS/2s were released before IBM released its first 32-bit machine -- the 386, which hit the streets in 1987. The first 386s ran at a whopping 16MHz. But the architecture opened the door for multitasking, which was previously only possible if you ran Desqview on your machine. Although it was quite a while before you saw mainstream attempts at multitasking. DOS was never a multitasking OS. Windows 3.0 was the first that sorta did. It was quickly supplanted by Windows 3.1, which proved much more robust and which really shoved Microsoft onto center stage.

The first 486 machines were becoming available by 1991 or 1992. I bought a 33MHZ 486 with 4MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive in early 1992 for almost $2,000. Paid another $500 for a 13" Sony Trinitron monitor. I didn't even bat an eye over those prices back then. Now I would gag. As I recall, I had a copy of Windows 3.1, but I rarely used it. I ran almost exclusively DOS programs on that machine. I'm a writer, and WordPerfect was my wordprocessor of choice. Still is, in fact. Oh, and I had a 2400 baud modem that I used for dialing into local bbses just for grins and things.

Getting back to your questions, I'm not sure what the Model 50 PS/2 was, but you mentioned specs of a 286 or higher, so that tells me then that a 50 is probably a 286.

My advice to you, if you really want to learn all this old stuff is to find somebody like me, who's been into PCs for the past 30 years or so, and who tends to put his old 'puter gear in storage instead of selling it or throwing it away, or using it for target practice. And then pick his brain. He may even be willing to part with some of his collection if you show sufficient interest. For instance, I have an external Zoom 28.8 modem, and I've got a couple of Supra 28.8s that had firmware upgrades that bumped hem up to 33.6. They were the hot ticket back in the early to mid 90s. I think I have just about every motherboard from every machine I've owned dating all the way back. I might be missing one. And the expansion cards -- ISA bus expansion cards. The all-important cards that had the two serials and one parallel port. Because that stuff wasn't built onto the motherboard back in those days. Nothing was built into the motherboard back then.

You know, what you're trying to do is not hard. The machine you're hoping to put together would have been a very simple, bare-bones model back in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Just try to stay true to the original components. DOS 5.0 was a good release. My favorite was v6.2 -- why I don't remember anymore. I think it had to do with recognizing larger hard drives -- say the 540 mb drives that had become popular by the early 1990s. You might have a bit of trouble finding an old drive that is still operable, and if that's the case, you can always take a somewhat younger one and partition it so that the partitions are within a size that DOS will see. In that respect, now that I think about it, you'll want a version of DOS much later than v3.3. See if you can find a copy of 6.2.

Somebody probably still has a fully functioning PC from the late 80s that they just stuck in a closet and forgot about. That would be most ideal because then you'll have the expansion cards you'll need -- mostly just that one card for the parallel (think printer) and serial ports (mouse and modem). That's what you want to see if you can find. Next best is to find somebody like me who never throws anything away.

Good luck.

 

[Doppel]

They absolutely just have to be 386s or 486s on ebay, and they should be worth nothing. As far as laptops are concerned they've been around for a very long time. The first laptop in our family was a 486. Maybe an SX20 or DX33 if those numbers are correct in my memory

 

[cooltouch]

I bought my first laptop in April of 1991. I remember this because it was two weeks after my daughter was born. I paid $2,000 for a 386SX 16Mhz machine with 2MB of memory and I think a 40 MB hard drive. It had a monochrome display -- 640x480, I think. No internal modem or ethernet. No internal mouse or mouse pad. No CD-ROM drive. It took 3.5" floppies. And it had a parallel port, a serial port, and a proprietary port for attaching accessory drives or a 10-key pad (I bought a 5-1/4" floppy accessory drive and a 10-key touch pad for it). I still have it, too.

You may recall that the SX chip architecture was a chip with 32-bit internals but that was shoehorned onto/into a 16-bit bus. They were the cheapo 32-bit chips and I think 16MHz was about as slow as you could go. The DX architecture were the standard chips. The internal speed was the same as the bus speed. The most popular was the 486-33DX. There was also a DX-2 type of chip that was made for the 486s, the most popular of which was the DX-2 66. 66MHz internal speed with a 33MHz speed external bus. And there was a DX-4 486. The only DX-4 I'm familiar with was the DX-4 100MHz -- 100MHz internal speed and 25MHz bus speed. The DX-4, despite having only a 25 MHz bus speed, was a very fast chip for its day, rivaling the slower Pentiums in performance. I know -- I ran a computer BBS for years, which started out as a 486-33DX and ended up as a 486-100DX4.0. AMD made a 386-40DX that was a real hotrod, for whatever reason. I knew a couple of guys who ran big BBSes with 386-40s and they weren't laggy at all.

Laptops have been around since the late 1980s, but the earliest needed pretty big laps. Mine was one of the first small-format laptops and was actually referred to as a notebook PC to emphasize the size difference.